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French rugby hunks score with women

FRANCE has taken an early lead over England in the Rugby World Cup even before the two sides meet.

The French have managed to turn their players into sex symbols - no mean achievement in a game known for bloody noses, broken teeth and cauliflower ears.

Fuelling women's interest in the game was a rugby calendar called Les Dieux du Stade (Gods of the Stadium) featuring several statuesque French players with only small portions of their anatomy hidden from view - a sharp contrast to the more traditional calendar of the English Rugby Football Union.

"They are athletic bodies, beautiful, sophisticated men," said Anne Saouter, a Parisian anthropologist and author. "That is different from the brutish virility that rugby used to put on display."

Sébastien Chabal, the hulking, long-haired forward with whom French women were falling in love last week, might be nicknamed "the Caveman" but 'les rugbymen', as they are known,